Thursday, April 26, 2018

Sepoy mutiny in Kapar

KUALA LUMPUR: A total of 50 PKR supporters from Kapar gathered at the party headquarters here today to protest the candidacy of Datuk Abdullah Sani Abdul Hamid for the parliamentary seat in Selangor, insisting that it is a “traditional-Indian” constituency.

The group threatened to not vote for PKR if its president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah does not comply with their demands.

G. Kalaiselvan, who claimed to be a grassroot leader in the party said it was imperative to have an Indian representative to represent the rights of the community in Kapar.

“We have no issues with Malay candidates but the area has many temples. How are Malay candidates going to go in?”

“We also don’t want Manivanan because his office is always closed and he doesn’t do his job properly,” Kalaiselvan told reporters while referring to dropped incumbent G. Manivanan who was replaced with Abdullah Sani.

Manivanan was instead offered the Hutan Melintang state seat in Perak by PKR.

PKR member, M. Tamilvanam said a Malay candidate could not represent the interests of the 17,000 Indians in the traditional Indian area.

“We need a representative who can read and write in Tamil as the community they will be serving are mostly Tamil educated. We will not vote for PKR if they refuse to field an Indian candidate,” said the cultural activist from Naam Tamilan.

The original Kapar as a federal constituency was abolished in 1974, with its voters lumped into the constituencies of Kuala Selangor and Pelabuhan Kelang.

In 1986 it was re-constituted and since then its representatives have been all Indian MP's (BN from GE7 to GE11, PKR in GE12 and GE13).

Kapar used to be the biggest federal constituency in Malaysia with approximately 150,000 registered voters compared to Putrajaya which had 15,000. To wit, the parliamentary power of a Putrajaya person is 10 times MORE powerful than a fellow citizen in Kapar.

But today's Kapar (2018) may be slightly different. The recent re-delineation has moved 40,000 plus voters out of Kapar to somewhere, perhaps into Tony Pua's constituency of Petaling Jaya Utara (now re-named Damansara).

Minus the exodus of 40K+ voters, will the new Kapar be now favourable to a Malay candidate, and which may be why PKR has put Abdullah Sani Abdul Hamid as its candidate for GE14?

While I know Kapar is one of those federal constituencies that will shrink from the sakti-ness of the EC, I am not too sure about its new ethnic mix.

But as a known kowtim-ness of the EC, it may be generally safe to assume the EC shrinks constituencies to favour BN candidates while sardine-ising Chinese dominated areas, a process of putting useless (to BN) Chinese voters to support (for all the EC cares 2 f**ks) a Chinese or Indian candidate belonging to the DAP or PKR.

Thus Kapar may no longer be a constituency which will favour an Indian candidate.

About Me

Just a bloke interested in the socio-political whatnots around the world, particularly those in Malaysia. Loves a laugh or/and story or two, or more, but loves civility and courtesy much more, especially in politics